Champagne socialist MacPhail toasts the Red Baron Dix

It gets stranger and stranger on the socialist side of the BC political spectrum.

It started today with NDP sister turned champagne socialist Joy MacPhail parachuting back onto the BC political stage to bestow her well-heeled blessings on the Red Baron himself, the NDP’s hero of social justice, far left leadership candidate Adrian Dix.

Kinda strange don’t you think? The nouveau-riche, makeup-caked MacPhail is well wedded to a movie/TV producer James Shavick. Her Gucci nod to social justice these days is a seat on the board of OUTtv … the Toronto-based specialty channel that celebrates the delights of being gay, lesbian, bisexual and/or trans-sexual.

It’s easy for her to postulate that she is “comfortable” with the social policy goals of her new political toy boy. She’s not staying at the Cobalt Hotel on Main Street and having Kraft Dinner tonight.

Joy! Give your head a shake. This is the same guy who – if he ever became premier … gawd forbid – would hobble the free enterprise economy starting with the extermination of BC’s struggling green power sector. This is the guy who favours state ownership, wants to renew his marriage vows with labour, tax banks and introduce new laws that ensure that “natural resource use is linked to economic justice.” I’m afraid to even ask what that means for resource communities.

This is a cruel joke Joy. You should be ashamed.

Fortunately, MacPhail’s pet project can be put in context by Ipsos Reid polling that shows that the party’s only moderate, consensus-building candidate, Mike Farnworth, is by far the public’s favourite NDP leadership contender. The poll also shows declining impressions of Dix among past NDP voters.

Farnworth received a net score of +28 after negative impressions were subtracted from positive impressions and that placed him well ahead of the competition. Dix received a dismal net score of -6.

Almost as strange as MacPhail’s cameo was the party’s decision to release an attack ad against the Liberals (posted below for your amusement). The ad is structured around the theme that all the Liberal candidates seeking the leadership are mere clones of outgoing Premier Gordon Campbell. Not terribly original. In fact, it is a carbon copy of a US Democratic Party attack ad from several years ago. Heck, even I have characterized several candidates as members of the “Campbell Family Circle” by virtue of their quiet obedience when Campbell foisted the HST on BC after promising in 2009 that there was no plan to fiddle with the tax system.

I find it mildly puzzling that the NDP brain trust thinks the timing is right for Liberal attack ads. This is a party that has just staged a leadership coup that all but destroyed every remaining shred of its shaky credibility. This is a party that is in such a state of internal angst that most of the people interested in leading it are flakes and dissidents.

It is a day like this that must give even the most pessimistic Liberal pause to smile.